Food for thought from ANZAC biscuit exhibition

An art exhibition and installation of ANZAC
biscuits to be staged in France offers real food for thought
about the carnage and casualties of World War I.

Associate
Professor Kingsley Baird from the College of Creative Arts,
who is responsible for some of New Zealand’s best-known
contemporary memorials, has created the artwork.

Mr
Baird, who is based at the School of Art, has designed
cookie cutters in the shape of able bodied and maimed
soldiers from World War I.

Twelve differently shaped
cookie cutters - depicting Australian, New Zealand, French
and German soldiers – will be used to cut out ANZAC
biscuits produced by French bakers.

The soldier-shaped
biscuits will be used in an installation-performance by Mr
Baird to make a three-metre long sculpture, called
Tomb, at France’s leading World War I museum, the
Historial de la Grande Guerre in Péronne, northern France
in the three weeks preceding ANZAC Day. Upon completion of
the sculpture in April more than 18,000 biscuits will have
been baked for the artwork. It will then be exhibited till
November.

The
variety of cookie cutter shapes, depicting soldiers from
four separate warring nations easily distinguishable by
their headwear, is also a commentary on the shared carnage
and loss wrought in Europe almost a century ago, Mr Baird
says.

Each biscuit shape is reminiscent of a soldier
statue memorial in a town square with the four nationalities
able to be easily identified by the New Zealand ‘lemon
squeezer’ hat, the Australian ‘slouch’ hat, and French
and German helmets.

“Mutilated –armless and legless
soldiers – and their ‘complete’ compatriots comprise
the Tomb sculpture, Mr Baird says. The ‘mass
grave’ of ‘soldiers’ and the ephemeral nature of the
memorial express the monumental waste of war.”

The
choice of ANZAC biscuit with which to depict the broken
bodies of war was also a natural one to make given its long
association with the army corps established in World War
I.

“It has been claimed they were sent by wives to
soldiers abroad because the ingredients do not spoil easily
and the biscuits kept well during naval transportation.
However, the combination of the name ANZAC and the recipe
now associated with it apparently first appeared in 1921,”
Mr Baird says.

The Tomb sculpture is based on the
Stone of Remembrance designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and found
in Commonwealth War Graves cemeteries. It is an expression
of the ephemeral nature of memory, national identity,
sacrifice and the waste of war; all key themes in Mr
Baird’s longstanding research of memory and
remembrance.

The exhibition coincides with research being
undertaken by military historian Professor Glyn Harper who
is part of Massey University’s contribution to the
Centenary History of New Zealand in World War I, marking 100
years since the outbreak of the conflict.

The Centenary
History will contain multiple volumes dealing with different
aspects of New Zealand’s involvement in the war.

The
Centenary History project will play a leading role in how
New Zealanders remember World War I. It also shows the
critical mass of research expertise the University has to
offer in this area,” Mr Baird says. In 2004 Mr Baird
designed the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Wellington, and
three years earlier the New Zealand Memorial in Canberra
with Wellington architectural firm, Studio of Pacific
Architecture.

His latest work will be exhibited at a
leading military museum in Dresden, Germany next year, 100
years after the outbreak of World War I.

The
installation-performance Tomb is being staged at the
Historial De La Grande Guerre in Péronne, Northern France
from April 8-22, 2013 and the exhibition continues till
November
24.

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